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Archive | November, 2012

Cold winds have already begun blowing across Chicagoland—early and often, like they always do. About this time each year, my thoughts start wandering off to warmer places. While Texas and Alabama typically get my nod, I currently have Florida on my mind. You should, too.

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SMRP, the Society for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals (“by professionals for professionals”) has been celebrating its 20th Anniversary throughout 2012. Held in Orlando, FL, last month, this year’s annual conference wasn’t just a nod to two great decades, it was among the best of the best SMRP events ever.

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Now is probably as good time as any to take our motor management quiz. That’s because it’s true: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. By answering a few simple and timely questions, you can improve the operating efficiency of important motor-driven equipment such as pumps, fans, conveyors, blowers and air compressors. Even more importantly, addressing these issues early can improve system reliability, preventing system failure and costly downtime.

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Championing maintenance-improvement projects in tough economic times isn’t easy. Many will recall the infamous 1990s downsizing era, when countless maintenance departments suffered deep cuts in their capital and operating budgets, which, in turn, lead to a crippling deferred maintenance approach.

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A non-destructive form of positive material identification can be a shortcut to uncovering the root cause of bad welds, parts failure and more. It also can be an effective way to verify on-spec conditions in your equipment and systems.

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Years ago, many of us took part in the “Great Fieldbus Wars” that raged across the automation side of manufacturing. If you worked on the maintenance and reliability side of an operation, you were either a bystander—essentially kept in the dark—or some type of “collateral damage” in these wars. Debates about the technical merits of different “fieldbus” technologies and discussions of the benefits to be realized for manufacturers of all types seemed to be never-ending.

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This topic may seem repetitious (I’ve written about it several times). But as the Power Generation sector continues to evolve, a discussion of its current state at a given point—and its future as far as we can see—needs to be revisited from time to time. So I’m bringing it up again: What’s the state of the Power Industry today, where is it going and what will it look like over the next decade?

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Savvy energy staffers know that monitoring and tracking the performance of their pumping systems can be a very profitable undertaking. Just how profitable, though, often hinges on which key performance indicators are followed over time. A noted expert suggests a combined approach.